Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Feb 15, 2013 12:14 pm I have just bought land in the Coburg Hill estate in Melbourne and am wondering if anyone on this forum has started building there? I am thinking of building with M3tr!con but am awaiting land settlement first (beginning of March). Exciting times! Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 2Apr 14, 2013 4:46 pm I'm also planning to build a double-storey house there. My land was settled at the beginning of March. I haven't chosen a builder yet. Hope you go well with Big M. They have got a few nice designs. Good luck. Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 3Apr 18, 2013 11:48 am Thanks Yodel. Our land was settled on the 5th of March (hooray), and we're just going through the process of finalising the house plan. We have our colour selection appointment tomorrow with Metr!con Looks like quite a few houses are starting their build on our street (Red Box) already which is exciting. Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 4Apr 19, 2013 11:20 am We are neighbours. Mine is 215 on red box. I've just received a quote on Breeze25 from Big M. The site cost is very high for my block. I'm also comparing with a S!mond's quote. Hope you go well with the colour selection appointment. Give us some feebacks how you went. cheers Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 5Apr 24, 2013 11:30 am Hi Yodel, we are neighbours! I've got Lot 206 on Red box. We are intending to build the Breeze 25 on our lot and our site costs were also extremely high - $32,000 believe it or not! Their excuse here is that it is quite expensive to build retaining walls as we are on a slight slope, and also the scaffolding required for the double-storey house. Our colour selection appointment went well, although as expected, there we many upgrades (totalling around $13-14k). If you do a Studio M tour, you'll probably realise why you would want to upgrade a lot of things (eg. staircase, flooring, bricks etc.). Good luck with your house hunt! Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 6Apr 25, 2013 3:38 pm Hi Vivian Is your site cost fixed or provisional only? I got a quote from Big M,fixed site cost $45k and provisional $27k. $450k is the total cost to build the display Breeze25 which means $220k spent on upgrading to make the display home looked so nice. My quote is the base+$16k on upgrades before a studio tour.The overall cost will be a big $ that is why I'm still considering other options. Good to hear your colour selection went well. Hope you can get the building contract finalised soon. Keep in touch. Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 7Apr 26, 2013 9:13 am Hi Yodel, Our quote for site costs is provisional only (so hopefully they don't uncover any rocks on the land) :/ The Breeze 25 display is beautiful but as you say, it has an unbelievable amount of upgrades. The staircase upgrade alone costs about $24-25k. FYI - I've also completed the electrical consultation now and all up, we've spent over 11k on electrical. Be careful with the upgrades at the Big M...they do cost quite a bit. I actually went to visit our land yesterday on red box st and ran into another couple who has built with Urbayne. Good luck with the house hunt! Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 8Apr 28, 2013 10:37 pm Thanks Viv. I had a visit to my block last week. I haven't seen any big M's house starting on our street, only S!monds and Orb!ts. I ran into the couple who have bought Lot 218. They are also building with big M. Breeze 25 is very popular. I had a look at your blog earlier.It's great. thanks for sharing your building experience. Good luck!! I'll make a choice btw Big M and one of custom design builders soon. I'll post some info later. Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 9Apr 29, 2013 3:35 pm I spoke to the Metr!con sales guy (Robert) on Sunday and he says that so far only one other person has signed a contract to build the Breeze 25, so we will be the first two people to build the Breeze 25 (and both on Red Box St). Our contract signing date is scheduled for early May. You are right - no big M houses yet on our street, although the next street over has quite a few. They are generally much bigger houses though. We've also briefly run into the couple who bought Lot 218, they gave us a few tips when we were doing our sales consult with Robert Good luck with your decision making! Let me know how you go. Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 10Sep 28, 2013 4:09 pm how are you guys going? Nonna's Nest House set for completion November 2013 Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 11Sep 29, 2013 9:38 am Hey Nonna, The build is going well, we had our slab poured last week and *should* have a frame up by the end of next week. Exciting times! Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 12Sep 29, 2013 1:53 pm yay! Nonna's Nest House set for completion November 2013 Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 13Oct 17, 2013 9:08 am Hi everyone, We are looking to build, potentially signing up for the land on the weekend. I'm frantically trying to do some research on the process as my wife and I have never built or even owned property before. We too are looking at building the Breeze25, thanks for posting those figures re: the display home, it makes things a lot clearer in terms of extras. I'm trying to understand the site costs if someone could please clarify for me, when we buy the land soil testing needs to be done then the builder can give an accurate price for the total site cost? Are the soil tests only done once the land is titled? We would have to wait until March next year if so? Now that a few of you are underway with your builds could I ask how much your site costs were approximately? What I want to understand are the big costs - these would be: 1. Land. 2. Site costs. 3. House. 4. Extras. Are there any other costs I need to be aware of / budget for? Thanks for your help in advance. Rob Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 14Oct 23, 2013 2:18 pm Hi Rob, Sorry if this message is a bit late (I haven't checked the forums for a while). In case you are still interested, here are some of our costs involved with building a Breeze 25 in Coburg Hill: Site costs (Fixed): 32k for a 9m width plot, however retaining walls were required because we are on a slight slope. 2k (Provision): rock allowance. Thankfully they didn't find any rock on our land so we should get this back on at the end. Other costs to look out for is the upgrade to 6 star energy rating. The standard Breeze 25 doesn't include this so it cost us about 5k to upgrade the windows, insulation etc to comply. This is also depends on the orientation of your house. You'll also need to upgrade things like the roof tiles in order to comply with the developer requirements. I am not too sure whether you can order soil testing of a land that isn't titled yet (I presume so) but in our case, we bought the land at the beginning of the year before choosing a builder and getting the soil tested. It would actually make a lot of sense to do the soil testing before you buy the land but I am not familiar with that process. Check out my blog if you are interested in a few of the upgrade costs involved with the Breeze 25. Good luck!! Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 15Nov 05, 2013 1:42 pm Thanks for that info! We are still in the process of sorting things out, there's so much to take in! It's really good to speak with someone building in the same area as we are looking to build and also building the same house. From what we understand the risks for us at the moment are unknown site costs and valuation (or under valuation) at the end of the build, have you any information/spoken to other owners in the area to give an indication to if the builds are being valued correctly by the lenders? That part alone is a bit nerve racking. Blog is great! How do you feel it's all going for you? Thanks. Re: Anyone building in Coburg Hill? 16Nov 06, 2013 3:17 pm Hi Rob, I completely understand about the nervousness of the valuation part - this had me stressed for weeks before I went on holiday! Basically our valuation came in spot on for what we paid for the land and the overall construction loan valuation was based on cost of land + cost of house. Even with all the upgrades we made (none of which I thought were exorbitant), the banks valued the house and land at what we paid for it. I think you'll be safe for the loan valuation part being that Coburg is a well established suburb with public transport and facilities that already exist. So far I haven't heard of anyone having their property 'undervalued' but then again, I haven't really asked around. Anyway, I hope it all goes well for you. Feel free to ask questions if you have any. We've been slowly meeting our neighbours on the street so it's been quite exciting! Cheers, Viv Howdy all. I am looking for feedback on what people would do to maximise and make an area as flat as possible. First, out the front of the house is a sloping hill, pretty… 0 20051 I brought terry road box hill in June 2022 House was meant to be completed Nov 2023 That did not happen I had to chase them so much to the land Registration and… 0 2403 Wish you all the best. Once you signed the contract, they will find millions excuses to charge you. And have seen their sites unfinished for a long time. 4 24716 |